Violin
by HoVis
Summary: Holmes muses upon his one sacrifice to the finer tastes of life.


**A/N:** Happy New Year! What follows is my own somewhat impulsive take on Holmes and his violin. One note; I know nothing about the instrument itself. I play the saxophone. The only thing I know about the actual playing of the violin is that it involves a bow, so my apologies to anyone who knows better if I seem to have glossed over, or worse, mistaken the technicalities.

**Premise:** The words which follow are somewhat apocryphal in regards to the canon. What if, I wondered, Holmes had fallen upon hard times, or become more dependent on his cocaine after Watson's marriage? Please do not hold the liberties I have taken with the great "canon" against me – and I hope you enjoy it!

**Disclaimer:** Of course not. Sherlock Holmes is entirely Sir Doyle's, but, like the "rose" of which Holmes shows a certain fondness, I am simply indulging in one of life's extras, and borrowing his wonderful characters for my own enjoyment, and hopefully (!) that of fellow fans.

**Violin**

_Note inside violin case bearing pawnbroker's marks._

Welcome to your very own symphony. Melodramatic words, to be sure, and hardly befitting of a detective, or any man of logic – but certainly befitting of the musician who greets you here.

I will assume that if you are reading this then you found it within the rough leather case in which the Stradivarius violin you have just purchased from the pawnbrokers rests. Needless to say, considering the seal upon this envelope and the title "for the owner", it would be a great impertinence if you were _not_ that person.

The price of this violin was, as I advised the pawnbroker, something around fifty pounds, and the tired, worn-down man (with, I observed, five children and one other on the way) had hardly the expertise to doubt me, as he surely should have done if he recognised the value of the instrument which you now own.

It is a curious thing that I should part with this instrument in such a way. In fact, it is curious that I should ever have owned it at all. Music is my one sacrifice to passion and illogic.

I cannot say why it should be so, and it is most curious of all that I have never sought to unravel this mystery as I have done so many others. Yet mysteries, I find, lose so much of their charm when they are solved – and all at once the intriguing and fresh becomes the commonplace. And of all things I cannot bear the commonplace.

If you are any reader at all of the horrendous, cheap fiction and not-so-fiction which has entered our markets today then you cannot fail to be familiar with the writings of a certain Dr John Watson. Dear Watson has, I recall, made some references to my violin in his passages, though I think perhaps he, much like the pawnbroker, often underestimated its worth. An analytical machine, it must be said, cannot be clogged with dust – and yet the very nature of humanity means that beings of flesh are very much inclined to pick up such dust as they go about their daily lives. I myself am not, I will admit with some reluctance, immune to this troublesome tendency, and so must use _some_ sort of cleaning mechanism to ensure that my machine is working entirely accurately. I cannot be distracted, as Watson often is, from the identity of a murderer simply because she happens to be a member of the fairer and more fallible sex. So to harden my heart against such creatures, I take up my cleaning cloth, my violin.

I must say that I am at this moment experiencing some doubt as to the wisdom of this message, considering the abjectly clichéd and over-wrought last sentence. What gain, after all, can there be in opening one's mind to a complete stranger? And yet – and yet... it seems that there is even less sense in opening one's heart to an unresponsive, static object.

Yet _is_ it unresponsive? Is the violin a static, untouchable object? Or is it – as I have heard some masters of the bow say with ridiculous sentimentality – an extension of the person themselves? If so, then you who reads this now possess that which I swore I would never give – a part of myself. It is strange that the person who holds so rare – I shall not say fine, you shall discover the instrument's beauty all yourself – a thing is but a stranger to me, and I to them but a name from a broadsheet.

Perhaps this foolish, sentimental, Watson-worthy message is nothing more than an expression of regret at my being forced to part with this fine instrument – my one and only solace, save perhaps cocaine. The violin is certainly the healthier of the two, in any case.

I am – unable, you see, to follow any longer the luxuries of domesticity. My life as of late has been... disordered. The rooms at Baker Street are no longer available either to me or my playing, and I hardly think I should be so fortunate as to find another landlady as patient as Mrs Hudson. I do admit that at times I must have tried her sorely, not least with my frequent musings upon the instrument you now hold. They wore Watson's nerves, too, my late-night _nocturnes_ and sawings with the bow.

It is a thing of beauty, the object you now own, and perhaps one of which I was unworthy if I now deem it of so little value to exchange it for – well, an unhealthier vice. Perhaps if I were a resourceful man I would make something of my agility upon the strings, but I have but one calling and if that is to be taken from me then I can hardly see the worth in anything else. I crave the chase, dear reader; I crave the thrill and energy of the endless pursuit. But at some time in his life a man's endless hunting must come to an end, as it has seemed to with me. I ask now for only one thing, and that is that this object here should receive an owner far more grateful than I for its endless services. A cold piece of wood it may seem to the unknowing, but I – and you – both know different.

To music. The last of the finer and warmer tastes of life which I have cultivated an interest in. A taste which I, Sherlock Holmes, now leave in the very same dusty pawnbroker's shop where I first came upon my treasure. Treat it well – at least, better than I. Perhaps by the time you read this my fall from grace will be well publicised, and my name alone will no longer command the respect it once did. In that case, forget my name. Merely do as I ask – from one musician to another.

_S.H_

_December 29th, 1888_

Note found attached to violin case: _Re-claimed by owner, January 13th, 1889_

888

**A/N:** I do hope I haven't made too many stretches of imagination with the character of our favourite detective. Please tell me what you thought of it!


End file.
